Billy the PoetThe mall in my little hometown got to be like this. After a while there were only the two "anchor" stores at the ends--a Hill's and a Montgomery Ward's, both now defunct--and the interior was just gone. It got to the point that you could just openly smoke weed in the mall part, because who was going to stop you? The only people there were the old people exercise walking in big white sneakers. Now it's all a super Wall-mart, obviously.

The Mothershipwhat a fantastically depressing, ugly mall. Even with people in it, that would be one ugly building.

Sanest Man AliveThe South Park Mall in my home town went on the decline for years until it was finally abandoned, then bought up by the largest Baptist church in the area for their 500-member congregation. The only actual store there now is a Burlington Coat Factory.

This was certainly eerie stuff, but the occasional glimpse of living souls keeps it from being quite the same decaying monument to excess as the abandoned Nawlins Six Flags. Also the lack of hurricane damage.

cognitivedissonanceAre they the wandering souls of the dead, lingering for the rest of eternity, damned by their own decisions in life, or are they just mall walkers?

I'd been thinking of doing it but the mall's owners are RABID that no pictures of any kind are allowed. If you are caught you get banned for life.

Jet Bin FeverI love urban/suburban decay. What's interesting is that such a gaudy space would never really be useful for anything else, so I imagine they'll eventually have to either gut it entirely or tear the thing down. It would probably be much cheaper to do the latter.

AvengingatheistHaving actually been to this to the mall to see a movie, I can confirm that it does have a movie theater, a sparse amount of food vendors, and a shoe store still. By far one of the most eerie shells of capitalist decay.

5 star for the eerie music.

The TownleybombMakes me wish there were some dead malls in Philly. I mean, except for the top floors of the Gallery.

kingarthurThe mall two towns over looks like this, though some (but by no means all or even the majority) of the empty stores have been taken over by mom and pop businesses looking for cheap rent. Most go out of business fairly quickly, however.

big pincersgreat music. this reminds me of my town's almost-dead mall, made famous (to us anyway) by Christian Slater climbing up the fountain in between the escalators in the Legend of Billie Jean (they later put rocks and potted plants on that part presumably to stop people from reenacting that scene). some of the anchor store still operate but only a handful of the interior ones, and the food court is especially depressing, but it it features "Orange Creations," a rip-off of Orange Julius.

Jeriko-1Talk about your childhood being wrecked. When I was a kid that mall was fucking awesome when it was alive. Awesome and I guess ultimately unsustainable.

Cherry Pop CultureThere is a dying mall in our Downtown area in my hometown. The mall is currently owned by Westfield and there is nothing really left except for a movie theater, mediocre food court and a few stores. The rent kills anything that opens. And it still has the nerve to charge for parking.

There was another mall that died, it was gutted to make a strip mall.

ParacelsusWhen I was a kid, there were three sizable malls in the area. Every last one died. One was knocked down completely, one was sawn in half to make a strip mall, and one still exists as a vast husk with a couple of residents.

dead_catWe got 3 in my area too. One died a slow horrible death and lay empty for 10 years before being bought by a local megachurch for renovation into a new campus (the doing of which has killed local out-lay businesses that had managed to keep functioning on their own without the mall). The other one has like an anchor store, and maybe one other in the mall that is open; everything else is boarded up and so far the owners have driven up a huge amount of debt with the local government by not paying for anything they are required to and then being fined for it. The other is located in a busy commercial spot, and seems to be healthy as ever, albeit after renovation to make much of it resemble a strip mall.

Kid FenrisI grew up in Dayton, so I'm sure I spent at least one afternoon here as a teenager, playing Street Fighter II and loathing the world.

dairyqueenlatifahThis reminds me of when the City Center Mall here in Columbus closed. The difference was that it didn't gradually decline or go away due to lack of business like this. Rather, it was a gorgeous mall that underwent a speedy death due to politics. It was incredibly depressing to see it empty out.

The saddest part about this mall, is that this mall is actually still operating, but only has four stores and a couple things in the food court left. So this mall is open, but looks like this.

It could be worse though, the biggest mall in the world, in China, barely opened in 2005, looked like this when it opened, and still looks like this.

candyheadrobotI live right down the street from City Center, or rather the open pit they call Columbus Commons now. You mean to tell me there are heartbeat cadavers of City Center businesses still over there? I'll have to investigate that some day.

dairyqueenlatifahThere isn't a shred of a heartbeat of anything commerce related left in Downtown anymore, the mall was the last, and everything aside of the mall and Lazarus was dead for the last thirty or so years. But the city is hellbent on bringing it back to life and getting people to live Downtown.

They built the Commons, and the Scioto Mile a block down, and now they just announced they're going to take away half of the commons to build apartments on. They're trying to do something similar to Creekside in Gahanna with it, which has been a beautiful failure since it's been built, but obviously no body learned anything from it.

I can't even begin to fathom how much money it's all cost, and I frankly don't care to know. I just long for the day I can drive around this city without detour signs and orange construction barrels plastered down every road.